FYI.
– U.S. government may force doctors to accept Obamacare and Medicare patients, eventually at gunpoint (Natural News, Nov 3, 2013):
The primary tool of socialism is force, and while that force usually begins with good intentions codified into law, it inevitably ends up with the kind of force used by Mao Zedong to murder millions of his own citizens. “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,” he famously stated, and Obama-supporting democrats are following in his footsteps.
Word from the street is that Kathleen Murphy, a democrat running for the House, wants to make it a legal requirement that doctors accept Medicare and Obamacare patients.
Many doctors, of course, have already announced that will not accept such patients because they would go bankrupt if they did. The government’s payout on medical services rendered to patients in these groups is a total joke, you see: doctors sometimes receive only 30% of what they actually billed. And they can’t negotiate, either. The government simply tells you what you “get” to receive in terms of payment, regardless of how much you actually billed as a doctor.
So forcing doctors to accept Medicare / Obamacare patients is the same as forcing them to work for free. Most doctors won’t work for free, as they have their own families to financially support, so they’ll simply quit the industry altogether. That, in turn, will cause a radical worsening of the existing doctor shortage across the USA, resulting in yet more people going without health care.
Force doctors to practice medicine at gunpoint
The reaction by democrats to all this, of course, will be to make it illegal for doctors to quit. And that will sooner or later be enforced at gunpoint, because force is the only tool that socialists really understand since they operate in total ignorance of the mechanisms of the free market and informed consumer choice. With Obama and the democrats, it’s always “Mandate! Mandate! Mandate!” even if it means assigning a government paramilitary worker to hold a pistol to the head of every doctor across America to make them see patients against their will.
And why not? Obamacare already forces hundreds of millions of American citizens to buy health insurance against their will. Now Kathleen Murphy wants to force doctors to accept all these patients against their will. Where does it ever end?
I’ll tell you where it ends: Violent revolution. Every socialist entitlement dream — whether it’s in China, Venezuela, Argentina or even Fascist-style systems like Nazi Germany — always end in violent collapse and mass slaughter.
Because, you see, a centrally-planned economy simply never works. And once the government has to resort to threats, penalties and force to make everyone comply, you end up with nothing more than an oppressive police state where everybody is angry, everybody lives in fear, and the costs of goods and service skyrocket because the free market is crippled.
Sooner or later the people revolt and overthrow the tyranny for the simple reason that liberty is part of the DNA of all humans. We are beings with free will and consciousness, and that means we don’t want to be enslaved and forced to act against our will — especially not by a criminal, incompetent government run like a mafia.
A health care voucher system would slash costs almost immediately
The way to really bring down health care costs in America while still fulfilling part of the Big Government dream of entitlements to the masses would be for Obama to announce a voucher system where every person gets (for example) $500 / month in a free health care voucher that they can spend as they like.
This would put consumers in the position of actually shopping around for affordable doctors, affordable medications and even preventive services such as holistic health care fitness memberships or dietary supplements that prevent chronic disease.
A voucher system is the opposite of the current monopoly system, and that’s exactly why democrats hate voucher systems: They give people the freedom to choose. Government hates choice, and the Obama government in particular hates the entire private sector. Deep inside, all Obama supporters believe in a soviet-style centrally-planned economy, and they live in a matrix of wild delusions in which they believe government actually delivers services more efficiently and cheaply than the private sector.
Just look at Healthcare.gov if you want to refute that delusion. In truth, no institution is more inefficient, wasteful and crooked in delivering services than the government itself. That’s why the real solution to health care in America is to allow consumers to shop for their own treatments, cures, insurance policies and doctor visits using free market principles of 1) informed consumers, 2) freedom to choose, 3) incentives for consumers to find the best price.
I proposed a solution to national health care in 2009
I’m actually the creator of a voucher system proposal that could have turned Obamacare into an amazing success instead of a disastrous failure. I proposed this system in 2009 and you can read it here:
http://healthrevolutionpetition.org
That petition was endorsed by the Life Extension Foundation, the Organic Consumers Association, the American Association for Health Freedom and Citizens for Health, among other groups.
Had America chosen that kind of system instead of the disastrous Obamacare, we wouldn’t be hearing democrats today saying incredibly stupid things like, “We have to MAKE doctors accept Obamacare patients!”
Here’s the full text of my Health Revolution Petition from 2009. It remains a viable system today:
We, the People of these United States of America, hereby call for revolutionary changes in our health care system that encourage health and prosperity instead of disease and corporate profit.
Specifically, we call for:
1. Federal government encouragement and reward for the People taking personal responsibility for their own health
– A full federal income tax deduction, with no minimum, for the purchase of any product, service, or device that is intended for use in the improvement of health. This includes, but is not limited to, dietary and herbal supplements, gym memberships, health coaching services, exercise equipment, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) therapies or any other health-enhancing products and services.
– The immediate creation of an investigatory panel, comprised of leaders from both conventional and naturopathic backgrounds, that would investigate the “Citizens In Charge” debit card health care system described at www.HealthRevolutionPetition.org/CitizensInC…
* The “Citizens In Charge” health care system is a “socialized-free-market” system of health care that eliminates all health insurance and puts health care decisions back into the hands of the People, allowing them to spend their government-provided health care funds on any health-related products or services they choose (conventional, alternative, licensed or unlicensed).
* The investigatory panel shall report on the economic viability (and potential savings) of the program, as well as the likely improvements in health care outcomes. This report shall be made publicly available on the internet for all citizens to read and discuss.
2. Restore Health Freedom to All Americans and Legalize Healing
– Allow all practitioners of the healing arts, licensed or otherwise, the freedom to practice healing arts with the consent of patients. End all government persecution of alternative and complementary care practitioners and clinics.
– End FDA oppression of free speech about health products and therapies.
– Protect access to dietary supplements, colloidal silver, medicinal herbs and anti-cancer products.
– End FTC and FDA assaults on the Free Speech rights of natural health companies who accurately describe the health benefits of their products.
– Affirm the rights of American moms and dads to choose to avoid mandatory vaccinations of their children.
– End federal assaults (DEA) on the possession or sale of medicinal plants that have been medically recognized and legalized by States such as California.
– Legalize Healing: End state monopoly medical licensing laws that grant conventional medical authorities absolute power to decide who can or cannot practice medicine.
3. End FDA Tyranny, Censorship and Corruption
– End the FDA’s definition of a “drug” and strip it of authority to censor truthful health claims about dietary supplements.
– End revolving door employment between the FDA and Big Pharma; fire current FDA employees and advisors with past financial ties to Big Pharma.
– Require full disclosures of financial conflicts of interest of FDA managers, scientists and decision panel members.
– End the FDA’s Big Pharma-initiated attack on compounding pharmacies and bioidentical hormone therapy.
– Investigate the FDA’s collusion with pharmaceutical companies in hiding clinical trial data from the American public.
4. Protect the Food Supply
– Ban GMOs in the U.S. food supply.
– Ban harmful food additives: MSG, aspartame and sodium nitrite.
– Require honest labeling of irradiated foods.
– Require country-of-origin labeling for all foods sold in the U.S.
– Ban the importation of foods using pesticides outlawed in the U.S.
– Save California’s almond growers and end the fumigation of raw almonds.
– Require honest investigation into mad cow disease and the questionable practices of factory animal farms.
– Only permit “harmonization” of our healthcare and food laws with other nations if all the freedoms and rights mentioned in this petition are respected and guaranteed both domestically and in the harmonizing nation.
5. Restore Honest Science to Medicine
– Require the open, timely publication of all medical studies.
– Require open disclosure of all ties between study authors, researchers and for-profit entities.
– Require clinical trial results to report ABSOLUTE numbers, not just relative numbers.
– Require long-term testing of drugs (at least 12 months) before approval in order to determine real-world side effects.
– Require safety testing of multiple drug combinations that are commonly prescribed to real patients.
– End disease mongering and the psychiatric medication of infants and toddlers. Outlaw the drugging of young children with mind-altering chemicals such as ADHD drugs.
6. End Era of Big Pharma Domination Over Health Care
– End all drug-company-funded “benefits” to doctors, including vacation-style CME events, speaking fees, consulting fees and author fees.
– Investigate and prosecute drug company executives for intentionally hiding negative drug trial data and misleading the public about the safety of their products.
– Get Big Pharma out of medical schools.
– Guarantee the right of consumers to sue drug companies and medical device manufacturers for damages caused by unsafe products.
– Restore power to the FTC to regulate commercial drug advertising practices.
– Modify the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to double product liability and personal injury awards involving any pharmaceuticals that are advertised in a Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) manner.
– Enact legislation that would impose substantial criminal penalties for executives of drug companies that advertise drugs for which serious adverse events were known by the company at the time the drug was submitted to the FDA for approval.
– Regulate direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription medications by removing its jurisdiction from the FDA and shifting it to the FTC, which is normally the agency that exercises jurisdiction over commercial advertising. Additionally:
* Require such ads to prominently and conspicuously display, for a period of no less than five seconds, a toll-free phone number that drug consumers may use to report drug side effects.
* Disallow the practice of using celebrity spokespersons for the promotion of any drug.
* Disallow ads that exaggerate claims of drug benefits or that do not accurately reflect the scientific findings of clinical trials.
* Require all statistical claims of drug benefits to be stated in absolute numbers, not relative numbers.
* Require drug side effects reports gathered through the toll-free phone number to be reported on a timely basis to the FDA.
* Require the FTC to disallow pharmaceutical “lifestyle advertising” that suggests taking a drug will dramatically transform the lifestyle of the patient. Lifestyle advertising sends a dangerous message that the “before” person (depressed, miserable, unhealthy-looking) will be magically changed into the “after” person (healthy, vibrant, happy, energetic and sexy) by taking the drug.
7. Protect Children From Products That Compromise Their Health
– Restrict commercial advertising of junk foods, sodas and caffeine energy drinks to programming hours not commonly viewed by children.
– Eliminate junk food and soda vending machines from all schools and public buildings.
– Get processed foods out of the school lunch program and encourage the use of fresh, unprocessed foods.
– End mandatory vaccination requirements (as per section 2, above), restoring this decision to parents.
8. Ban Man-Made, Non-Natural Cancer-Causing Chemicals in Cosmetics and Personal Care Products
– Ban man-made, non-natural chemicals in cosmetics that have not been proven safe.
– Require government-funded testing of commonly used man-made, non-natural chemicals to determine their safety.
– Require honest labeling of cosmetics and personal care products with appropriate cancer warnings.
– Recognize that the skin absorbs chemicals, and chemicals used on the skin can enter the bloodstream.
9. Invest in Disease Prevention
– Encourage and permit tax deductions for routine testing of vitamin D as part of routine patient exams.
– Encourage vitamin D supplementation and sensible sunlight exposure to correct deficiencies.
– Teach the population about nutrition, vitamin D, medicinal foods and disease prevention by using Public Service Announcements.
10. Protect the Environment from Drug and Chemical Companies
– Require the EPA to investigate the environmental impact of pharmaceuticals in the water supply.
– End the chemical fluoridation of public water supplies.
– Require hospitals, pharmacies and nursing homes to dispose of expired pharmaceuticals in an environmentally-conscious away that avoids more drugs being flushed down the drain and passing intact through waste water treatment facilities and then into our bodies when we consume tap water.
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